SHERWOOD, OR (WFLA) – When Alicia Quinney and Joshua Marbury came home from a night out, they found their 1-year-old screaming and their babysitter asleep.
“The first thing I saw was Jacob’s black eye,” Quinney recounted. “And I was like, oh my gosh, what happened? And he turned over and the whole side of his face was black and blue.”
They also found a bruise in the shape of a hand mark on little Jacob’s face, dots underneath his collar bone, marks inside and around his ear and bruises on his arm and his back. A detective told them the dots would be a sign of smothering.
Marbury said the babysitter later admitted hitting Jacob, but police said they needed to build a case before making any arrests, KOIN reported.
The parents took Jacob to the hospital, documented his injuries and contacted police. Two months have now passed, and the babysitter will not face charges because of a 2012 Oregon court ruling making it tougher to prosecute abuse cases with victims who can’t talk.
“This guy,” Quinney said, “is living his life and he’s lived his life freely for 3 months and we’ve had to sit here and be as patient as we could be, being traumatized, are going to be traumatized, the rest of our life – while this person can do whatever he wants to do.”
On May 20, Alicia Quinney and Joshua Marbury posted a photo of their son, Jacob, to Facebook.
It read, in part:
“…DO YOUR PART, you have a verbal confession and evidence showing a hand print!!!! A dead body can’t tell you who killed them. Yet a baby isn’t held to the same standard because he can’t talk???? Well neither can a dead body…”
The post has attracted worldwide attention from people, lawmakers and law enforcement.
For Jacob’s parents, it’s frustrating.
“I saw the evidence and what the doctors told me and showed me, of a handprint on his face,” Marbury told KPTV. “There’s no denying what he did.”
Their 3-year-old daughter saw what happened to Jacob and she is now in counseling, they said.
Little Jacob’s family is not just sitting idly by. They began a petition on Change.org to get“Justice for child abuse victims who are unable to voice their pain in the eyes of the law.” At this writing, more than 12,000 people have signed this petition.
They’ve also started a GoFundMe page to help defray costs associated with any legal fees they may encounter as they try to change the law.
And the hashtag #JusticeforJacob has attracted global notice along with the story.
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